discernment and delight

mixed motives: Esther 4

It may be that Esther’s mental state at a crucial moment in her mediated dialogue with her Uncle Mordecai is signaled by one small Hebrew word.

And they told Mordecai what Esther had said.Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, ‘Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews.For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?’ (Esther 4:12–14 ESV)

The English translation quoted above has the merit of attempting to render this little word explicitly rather than blend it into the verbal construction of which it is a part: ‘Do not think to yourself …‘ So, for the translators of the English Standard Version, Mordecai knows that Esther may be deceiving herself behind the curtain of her words. Perhaps she is even attempting to double-talk Mordecai, arguing the impropriety of approaching the Persian king uninvited while secretly seeking he down exit.

The New International Version takes the other possible route:

Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape.

The conundrum is the little Hebrew word בנפשך, which could be glossed very literally in context as ‘Do not suppose in your soul that …’ It is possible that the text merely wants to have Mordecai say ‘Don’t imagine …’. But paired with a verb of mental rather than spoken activity (the Hebrew דמה), this looks very much like Mordecai observing that Esther’s objections to assertive action in the crisis at hand may conceal an inner desire for self-protection. Perhaps the text even allows itself to insinuate that Esther would be prepared to see her people perish on a technicality so long as she made it through the storm.

No wonder Bible translators die young.

It would not be the first time an alarmingly daring Hebrew text found ‘help’ from scandalized translators who though the safest path is not to imagine that the Bible’s protagonists could be that human.

Let us suppose that Esther shares with us readers a heart that—especially in an existential crisis—does not know itself well enough to be sure its motives are simple. Let us suppose that, for one white-hot moment, Esther’s own survival looked preferable to securing her people’s future.